Marigolds

“Marigolds” is a Coming of Age story set in an impoverished Black community during the Great Depression and primarily features a 14-year-old protagonist, Lizabeth, as she reaches womanhood. The narrator, an older Lizabeth, reflects on a summer day that culminates in the end of her innocence and the beginning of adulthood and compassion. The narrator asserts, “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence” (13). For compassion to exist, innocence must be lost, and this loss is framed as a necessity so that a child can become an adult who connects with other human beings, as well as their suffering and joy. In the climax of the story, Lizabeth destroys the only beauty and joy that Miss Lottie has—her marigolds—and this ultimately destroys the last vestige of hope that the elderly woman had. When Lizabeth realizes the true extent of what she has done, the humiliation and contrition pull away her last bits of childhood and allow her to have true compassion for another human being.

Throughout “Marigolds,” Miss Lottie illustrates resilience in the face of The Eroding Impact of Poverty. Poverty of varying levels is found in Lizabeth’s community, but the narrator recalls that “we children, of course, were only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty. Having no radios, few newspapers, and no magazines, we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community” (2). The words “somewhat” and “vaguely” are used here, but it becomes clear as the narrative unfolds that the children in general and Lizabeth in particular are, in many ways, acutely aware of their challenging circumstances, and that leads to their malicious games. Without any hope, they can only destroy.

Despite her harsh and bleak circumstances, which seem hopeless even compared with others in her community, Miss Lottie dedicates herself to her marigolds. She lives in the most ramshackle house in the neighborhood, and her only son is not able to speak or do anything besides rock in a chair and chase the children out of the yard when they startle him. Miss Lottie has no visitors and never leaves to visit anyone, implying a deep loneliness that seems even worse than her impoverished circumstances. Yet, despite these challenges, she creates something that no one else in the neighborhood does.

Her marigolds symbolize love, joy, beauty, and hope, which she cultivates fastidiously. Not only is she committed to Creating Beauty in Ugliness, but she also protects that beauty ferociously from the malicious attacks of the neighborhood children. She is described as physically ravaged by age and her impoverished circumstances, but she still fights for her garden and the beauty it brings. It is only after the climax of the story, when the garden is completely destroyed, that she truly gives up and does not plant her marigolds again. Lizabeth’s one reckless act causes the ultimate destruction that life’s circumstances and poverty were not able to complete: Miss Lottie can no longer reach toward love, hope, and happiness by planting marigolds.

At the beginning of her journey from child to woman, Lizabeth sees Miss Lottie as an adversary to be mocked, ridiculed, and feared. When Lizabeth recalls destroying the marigolds—the final action of the story—she hints at the transformation and maturity that follow the event, but the full details are not revealed to the reader. However, the reader is given hints throughout the text about the similarities between the older Lizabeth and Miss Lottie. The narrator states:

Whenever the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded. I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence, elusive as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now (1).

In this rare flash into the present, the reader can see that Lizabeth, like Miss Lottie, has also surrounded herself with little bits of beauty, like her potted geranium.

Miss Lottie struggled her entire life against The Eroding Impact of Poverty, and the reader is given the impression that Lizabeth has similarly struggled against that same symbolic cage that poverty attempted to trap her in, though there are hints that she has overcome poverty in her older years. Nevertheless, she seems to have been faced with a barren situation of her own, as the text ends with her stating, “For one doesn’t have to be ignorant and poor to find that life is barren as the dusty roads of our town. And I too have planted marigolds” (13). This coda implies that the older Lizabeth’s hardships are not necessarily those born from the poverty and lack of education that afflicted Miss Lottie and many in the community of her youth. Nevertheless, her hardships have created a similar situation of despair, and the only remedy is to attempt to Create Beauty in Ugliness.

The story’s tone is one of resilience in the face of overwhelming despair, as the only alternative is hopelessness, which breeds destruction and anger. The setting is unrelentingly bleak—with the exception of the marigolds—and repeatedly mentions the dust that permeates everything and symbolizes the poverty and despair that clings to the people in her community. The dust becomes a cage in the same way that poverty has become a symbolic cage for this community and Lizabeth’s family. Lizabeth and the other children rattle the bars of the cage and, in their despair, destroy even the beautiful things around them to take control of their environment. This frustration is born from the growing realization that they have very few options to improve their lot in life, being both poor and Black, and they are angry about the unfairness.

Witnessing her parents discussing their poverty—and how it has caused her seemingly indestructible father to sob—propels Lizabeth to destroy the only beauty she can find, leading the main character to a significant moment of growth. However, before that point, the narrator invites the reader to come to another conclusion, this time about Black women. The narrator does not end the scene with Lizabeth’s father’s sobs; it ends with him “finally quieting until [Lizabeth] could hear [her] mother’s voice, deep and rich, humming softly as she used to hum to a frightened child” (10). The last voice given to either parent is given to Lizabeth’s mother, who has previously been described as “soft and small” but is “now the strength of the family” (9).

Because of the toll the Great Depression has taken on Lizabeth’s father, her mother has become the breadwinner of their family. While Lizabeth is bewildered and frightened by this change, it speaks to the strength, determination, and ingenuity of Black womanhood. This moment conveys another path forward for Lizabeth that involves neither destruction nor despair but embracing the strength that comes from following her mother’s path. Within the story, her character detours toward a reckless and cruel choice, but wisdom—born from the loss of innocence—resonates in the narrator’s final reflection and attests to how she, like her mother, grows from the lessons learned amid life’s difficulties.